insignificant
by farewellblindgirl
Summary: A short post-ep for "Significant Others." Sorry for the week long delay, I'm out of practice...


A/N: Just a tiny little ficlet post-"Significant Others" to get back into practice...

Disclaimer: As always, they are owned by far better owners than me.

* * *

"So, two egg s'morelet or three? ... Kate?"

She shakes off the fog and goes to sit down at the island. She's not sure what he's asked, so she just mumbles and nods and hopes it's enough. It probably isn't, but he seems to give her a pass and goes back to whatever he's doing. Breakfast, she guesses.

She has always thought she was the mysterious one. Now she's not sure.

Her brain is cataloging all the ways he's perfected hiding in plain sight, the girls, the jokes, the gifted evasions. What she's always taken as a boyish temperament now looks to be a complicated mask.

"Kate, what's wrong? Did Meredith say something?"

She looks up at him, standing in front of her in an apron, serving a yellow and brown ... thing ... onto the plate in front of her. She ignores the thing in front of her to look at his face. She's not as good at hiding as she thought.

"Why did you two get divorced?" she asks. Its out of her mouth before she's even really aware of it, and it isn't the question she wants to ask anyway. But the question she wants to ask is too big, so maybe this is a way to probe at the edges of it, like a sore tooth.

"Is that what she talked to you about?"

Kate doesn't speak. He stares at her for a second, then shrugs. The happiness falls off of him like rain, and he shrugs again, resigned now. "I guess that depends on which one of us you ask," he says, finally.

"I'm asking you."

"Well, there was the sleeping with her director bit," he says. He laughs and shakes his head, but she keeps watching him. He fiddles with something at the stove; she continues to say nothing.

"The cheating was the last straw," he continues when she doesn't grant him the out, "but that wasn't the reason. Meredith was fun, but ... you marry an actress, and you get someone who is always playing a part. She was never a wife, she was always just a woman playing at being a wife. Or playing being a mother, or playing being the gracious ex..."

He stares off into space for a minute, with a look she hasn't seen since the Tyson case.

"There was never anything to hold onto there, you know?"

It doesn't feel like a story or an evasion, no matter how she turns it around in her head, so eventually she nods. She takes a bite of her omelet - its truly disgusting, but she doesn't let it show on her face.

"And if I asked her?"

"Didn't she tell you? Isn't that what started this?"

She shakes her head. It isn't, but she's gotten herself into a conversation she doesn't know how to control.

"I suspect she'd say some crap about never knowing anything about me."

"Did she?"

"As much as she wanted to. Its not exactly like I'm a closed book. But if you're constantly changing who you are everyday, I guess you assume everyone else does too. I don't know if she thought that there was something more here than she saw, or if she wanted more than what was here. I'm not sure I really care, actually."

Kate sits back in her chair, letting her omelet cool in front of her.

"Kate... Meredith is ... she's like eating an entire birthday cake..."

"A deep fried Twinkie," Kate interrupts.

"Yeah... I did call her that. Its appropriate. You're not used to it, but this is the after, the heartburn, where she kicks up a whole bunch of interesting drama, right before flitting off to the site of her next disaster. But seriously, do you really think I'm that inscrutable? I'm really not that complicated, seriously. And you can always just ask."

She leans back in towards him.

"Your Dad?"

"Ah. She said she could never get me to open up about that, right?"

"In all fairness, at least she asked."

"Yeah, but it doesn't count if you don't accept the answer you get, does it?"

"What was the answer?"

"I just don't care. Its not like losing a parent, Kate. Its just... not having one. It sucked when I was a kid, but mostly because I was teased about it, not because..." He shakes his head. "Now? It would be nice, but..." he says with a shrug.

"But what?"

"It'd be awesome if he was some super spy who loved my work and was happy to meet me, but most likely he's some sixty-something nobody who can't read and just wants to mooch off me," he says. He spears some of his own omelet off the plate he's holding and takes a bite. She watches him stare at his plate while he chews. "As long as I don't know, he can be anything. If I did know ... well, I just don't need him enough to care about finding out. Sometimes I still wanted to know, but then the precinct came along."

"I don't follow."

"The Captain. Maybe he wasn't exactly a Dad, but..."

"He was family."

"Yeah. He was. And you are. And so are Kevin and Javi. I don't want or need more than that."

"You sure?"

"Kate, have you ever known me to be shy about going after what I want?"

"No."

He walks over, leans across the island to her.

"That's all there is. Like you've said, sometimes there's no great big mystery. There's always a story, but sometimes it just isn't an interesting one."

She nods and gives him a small smile. She can't tell if she'll let that answer stand because its the truth or just because she needs to pull back and look at it in her own time. She smiles a bigger smile and takes a bite of her horrible breakfast.

"So the Meredith drama is over?" he asks.

"I think so."

"Good. Stay."

"What?"

"Stay. Stay here another night or two, not because you have to this time, but just because."

For an answer, she leaned across the counter and kissed him.


End file.
